The Black Lodge
by The Carnivorous Muffin
Summary: Drunk on the wine of the king of heroes, Lily dreams of red rooms and saxophones. Side fic to "The Demiurge" although you can likely get away with only "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus".


**Author's Note: A few notes, one this is a side fic for "The Demiurge" but it's actually fairly understandable if you haven't read that, just, well, slightly spoilery for that fic. That said, if you haven't read "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus", you'll be so confused you won't even know what to do with yourself.**

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A small, but necessary, fact: Lily did not dream.

If she had ever been capable of dreaming, once, it had long since been overwritten by that strange fluid dimension that was her own subconsciousness, where Wizard Lenin had resided for so very many years.

But even then, it hadn't been dreaming in any traditional sense of the term, because while the world around them appeared to be dreaming, their surroundings twisting themselves the stairs climbing up and down to nowhere at all and connecting in on themselves in infinite loops, Lily herself had never felt out of place or anything but lucid.

Similarly, though out of control of his environment, Wizard Lenin had been perfectly in control of himself.

So rather than Lily dreaming it was more that they inhabited a world which, itself, was dreaming. However, whether it was dreaming of electric sheep, yellow brick roads, monsters beyond human apprehension, or something else entirely was anyone's guess.

Then, when Wizard Lenin like Athena had burst from her skull and onto the physical plane, he'd left behind a hollow sort of daze, a fading out of the world and consciousness, but there weren't any visions that accompanied it.

Lily would just close her eyes and… and go away for a little while.

However, there was another small but necessary fact: Lily had also never been drunk before.

But the thing about dreaming, Lily was discovering, was that there was a sort of haze that hung over you a bleary cloud that dulled your thoughts, so that even when you were no longer in the room you'd been before, in the arms of a demigod of all things, it did not bother you that you were now sitting in an armchair with near perfect posture, staring at the red curtains which surrounded the room, and the back of a pale haired young man in a red suit, standing there… twitching.

Strange erratic movements that seemed unnatural, like natural human movement had somehow been reversed…

Her eyes drifted so that her head was facing forward, and there, across from her, was Wizard Lenin, dressed in black and red, grinning across from her as if he knew some great secret that she herself could not guess.

Her eyes, invariably, drifted back to the man in red…

He turned, again almost unnaturally, and clapped his hands together but the sound was slightly off, his hands hitting before the noise was heard, and, as he pointed at her, his words were slurred backward then forward again so that they were almost nonsensical, "Let's rock!"

Dimly, Lily noted, that she was staring at Rabbit, and that he was grinning back at her with some unfortunate human's borrowed bravado.

Rabbit walked, slowly, with that same movement that bordered on unnatural, reversed yet not reversed, towards the open chair next to Wizard Lenin. And Wizard Lenin… His enigmatic smile remained but his cold pale eyes burned.

The hardwood of the floor was made of two colors, dark and light, and they zigged and zagged their way across the room.

However, even sitting, Rabbit jerked, looked towards Lily with his dark eyes and an enthusiasm that was normally quite foreign to him, and as he smiled at her, his words came out slurred, slow, backward, and forward, "I've got good news. That gum you like is going to come back in style."

Lily, slowly, too slowly, blinked, then, just as slowly, her head turned towards Wizard Lenin, forever smiling across at her, his eyelashes filled wish secrets, casting their shadows upon his cheekbones.

"She's my cousin," Rabbit's jerking words explained as he slowly, too slowly, nodded towards Wizard Lenin, eyes taking him in piece by piece, then back to Lily, "But doesn't she look almost exactly like Laura Palmer?"

"But… these aren't your words," Lily said, confusion bubbling in her stomach and rising up her throat, before turning to look at Wizard Lenin, still smiling across at her, "Are you Laura Palmer?"

And when he spoke, his voice, too, was slurred, disjointed, backward and forward, a scowl twisting across his lips in the middle before evening out to that pleasant, knowing, smile, "I feel like I know her, but sometimes my arms bend back."

And Rabbit, leaning forward, eyebrows raised towards Lily, claimed, "She's filled with secrets."

The words didn't echo, but in any other context, they would have. Lily, though, sat in the chair, and she watched.

Rabbit leaned back, disjointedly, eyeing her, and slurred, "Where we're from, the birds sing a pretty song…"

He looked towards Wizard Lenin, dark almost iris-less eyes capturing his sculpted Romanesque features, "… and there's always music in the air."

Distant snapping could then be heard as Rabbit's gaze turned upward, swaying in time with the rhythm developing as a bass began to strum in time, then, sliding somehow into the motion, he stood and began to dance, slowly, grooving his way through one step at a time as a saxophone began to wail…

Lily watched, utterly transfixed, as somehow even his jerking, slurred, reversed, forwarded movement gained an inexplicable inhuman grace as he moved, the red lights turning his hair a strange pale crimson to match his crimson suit, and the shadows on his pale face, scarlet.

Wizard Lenin slowly, across from Lily, stood, eyes still, always, on Lily, walking slowly towards her in the manner of a woman's seduction while Lily remained perfectly still in her chair. Slowly, too slowly, Wizard Lenin bent down towards her, eyes holding hers captive as he perched on the arm rest of her chair and brushed his hand against the edge of her jaw, caressing her chin and pressing his lips against hers even as the saxophone wailed and the unseen fingers snapped…

Then, pulling his face back from hers, that enigmatic smile still, forever, painted across his lips, he turned her head and moved his lips against her ear, and whispered words that she could not hear, even as unseen fluorescent bulbs began to flicker.

Lily's eyes, moved to Rabbit, a vision of white, red, and black, still dancing, steps perfectly in time to the music…

The room froze, Rabbit caught mid-step, the saxophone mid-note, and that flickering bulb caught bright and burning for a single instant, Lily's eyes widened, and in her ears she heard a whisper so loud that it must have been a scream.

"Do you remember?"

Slowly, too slowly, she turned, but the space where Wizard Lenin had so recently inhabited was empty, only the sight of the red curtain taking its place. Lily, slowly, too slowly, turned her head back to look at Rabbit, still frozen, but in a slightly different position, so that his eyes met hers.

She stared across from him, brow furrowed, but still seated, and then, the music started once again only this time, playing and wailing backwards, and Rabbit, along with it, grooved backwards, in a somehow more natural and more human motion, towards his arm rest, Lily silently marking his progress until he was seated once again, smiling across from her.

"Forgive my cousin," Rabbit slurred and twitched, hands jerking as they gestured towards Lily then the empty seat, "She forgets herself sometimes."

"Why did Laura leave?" and her own voice was perfectly clear and perfectly natural, and yet for that very reason, seemed almost more surreal and warped than the room itself.

"She wears the mask well," Rabbit slurred, eyes burning as he held Lily's gaze, "But she never quite managed the part."

Rabbit leaned forward, red shadows cast beneath his own eyelashes onto the dip between his cheekbones and his sockets, "Her secrets are in her eyelashes."

Lily frowned slightly, tilting her head slowly, too slowly, as she stared at Rabbit in his suit, and at once it struck her odd that he should still be here, no longer dancing, when Laura Palmer was already dead and buried.

"But you're still here," Lily said and Rabbit grinned back at her, a delighted almost boyish thing, stretched and disjointed as it was.

"I am always here," Rabbit slurred to her, clasping his hands together, "As you are always here."

"Am I always here?" Lily asked, eyes not drifting from him, but taking in the red curtains, the wooden zigging zagging of the floor, the two chairs across from her, the silver laps, and the small marble statue behind him.

"We are many places," Rabbit responded with unnerving, slurred, reversed, disjointed, ease, "You and I."

"I don't remember being here," Lily said in a perfectly even tone, one that conveyed neither confusion nor doubt nor any shade of anguish as she sat with her arms still on the armrest.

"Memory is my suit," Rabbit said, pale hand motioning with disjointed unease down towards the red of his suit jacket, and black pants, "It is red and black and very trendy for the season."

"I like your suit," Lily commented, eyes caught on the lapels of the jacket, for a moment looking like the wings of some strange red bird.

"Do you like my pretty music?" Rabbit asked and this time, this time she almost expected the unseen fingers snapping, the distant sound of the saxophone as both stared at the ceiling, swaying in rhythm.

With that strange fluid motion, identical to the one before, Rabbit stood and reached out a slow disjointed hand towards her, his fingers long, pale, and thin. Lily, with her own rational, human, movement reached out slowly, tentatively, and squeezed his hand, allowing herself to be pulled up by him and swept into his strange backwards dance.

"I don't know the moves," Lily said, her eyes on his face, on his eyes staring so deeply into hers she thought there might be nothing left but those eyes, even as her feet somehow, inexplicably, followed his rhythm.

"I'll lead," and he did, a slow, quasi grooving waltz, him moving backwards towards the edge of the room and pulling her with him.

The song, the saxophone rising and falling like the tides even as the bass thrummed and the fingers snapped, seemed to be longer than before, or rather, without end. Lily let her head fall against Rabbit's shoulder, and asked quietly, "Does your pretty song have a name?"

"Kismet," he slurred, tilting his head to catch her eyes, then slowly, in a strange mirror of Wizard Lenin's actions earlier, he brushed his pale hand against her cheek and tilted her head, then, slowly, moved his lips against hers and pressed gently.

Then, pulling back and smiling, he tilted her head again, lips touching the edge of her ear as he whispered unheard words, the fluorescent light flickering once again, and with a blink it was gone and Lily was attempting to sit upright, suddenly back in the karaoke joint, drunk, naked, in Gilgamesh's pale arms, as a pulse of magic spread out from the Mion river.

And even as she tried to crawl out from under him, the red room disappearing as she searched for her clothes, Rabbit's whispered word "entropy" reverberated in her ears.

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 **Author's Note: And this may just be, the creepiest thing Rabbit's done to date, well done, Rabbit. Written for the 300th review of "The Demiurge" by lunamoon531 who asked for Rabbit to arrive earlier in "The Demiurge" and for him and Lily to be vaguely paired together where they cover all the usual topics of the meaning of life, death, etc. Well... I say this fits all of those requirements, or at least, as best as I am able to fit all of those requirements.**

 **Thanks for reading, reviews are much appreciated.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Fate/Zero**


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